


If You Need a Place To Crash (Let Me Catch You When You Fall)

by BeautyGraceOuterSpace



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Death, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Star Trek: AOS, Starfleet Academy, Tarsus IV, pre-movie fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 05:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10803141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautyGraceOuterSpace/pseuds/BeautyGraceOuterSpace
Summary: Jim never slept on his back. He never slept on his back, or on his stomach. Never sprawled out and relaxed, and slept for a good long while. He slept curled on his side, knees drawn into his chest and arms coiled protectively near his head.





	If You Need a Place To Crash (Let Me Catch You When You Fall)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [If You Need a Place To Crash (Let Me Catch You When You Fall)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15725079) by [Star_Trek_20XX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Trek_20XX/pseuds/Star_Trek_20XX)



> A/n: So apparently I'm a sucker for angst. Hope you enjoy! Leave a comment if you have any feedback or bits you like, really means a lot to me!

Jim never slept on his back. He never slept on his back, or on his stomach. Never sprawled out and relaxed, and slept for a good long while. He slept curled on his side, knees drawn into his chest and arms coiled protectively near his head.

Len first noticed it during their time at the academy. A few months into term, late one evening, there was a knock on his door. Standing there still in full cadet reds was Jim Kirk, sheepishly tugging at the hair at the nape of his neck. The two had become fast friends after meeting on the shuttle, and Jim had been to Len’s dorm a few times already to study or just to kick back after classes.

From what Len had been able to gather, Jim’s roommate didn’t seem to like him much. Not that he blamed the guy, Kirk was a showboating pain in the ass at the best of times, but he was also smart, cynical, at times funny, and almost irrationally sincere. Everything about James Kirk screamed cocky, obnoxious, loud, arrogant, the list went on and on… until anyone bothered to spend more than 5 minutes with the man.

Their second day of classes, Jim had been late to one of their shared courses. Len had taken his seat, the chair next to him remaining empty until nearly 15 minutes after the start of the lecture, at which point Kirk had sauntered in, the very picture of nonchalance. The professor had scolded and dished out a few demerits before letting Jim take his seat. Jim sat quietly, shaking his head slightly when Len tried to meet his eye, pointing at the screen on which the class notes were posted in a not-so-subtle suggestion that Len jot them down. After class, Len had asked him outright why he was so late, and Jim had replied with a shrug, “One of the younger cadets was having trouble finding their engineering class. I had a class there yesterday, so I helped them find the building. Not my fault it’s across campus.”

That little incident earned Jim the delightful experience of having “slacker” hurled at him for a few days by some of the other students he had apparently already pissed off. Given that one of them had a glowing shiner, Len assumed these must have been the cadets involved in the infamous bar fight that had led to Kirk’s enrollment in the first place. They weren’t the only ones who seemed to have a problem with the younger man, though.

Another popular insult was “teacher’s pet”, after Kirk was seen carrying some books and papers for the elderly adjunct xenolinguistics teacher. His high marks in the class had nothing to do with his chivalry, but people didn’t particularly seem to care. In fact, people tended to make a lot of assumptions where Jim Kirk was concerned, something Len learned quickly.

He was the Kelvin baby. Of course he was. Len knew the name Kirk had been familiar, hell, it had been all over the news for ages, the selfless sacrifice of the acting captain, the lives he saved, the tragedy of a wife and two young sons left behind... but he had been so far removed from Starfleet up until his divorce that he hadn’t put much stock into the name until a teacher decided to make the booming announcement that “the son of George Kirk was following in his father’s footsteps at last” and that he “hoped Mr. Kirk was up for the challenge.” He hadn’t been present for that particular class, but he’d heard through the campus grapevine that it had been quite a proclamation.

Of course, after that became public knowledge via the glowing expectations of the professor, the rumors went wild. Jim Kirk only got in because of his father’s name. Jim Kirk was being given a free pass in most of his classes because of who he was. Jim Kirk was a stuck-up preening peacock with an ego the size of Vulcan an attitude to match. Len heard the rumors, of course, but he quickly decided they were the jealous mumblings of young competitive idiots, and that he would draw his own conclusions, thank you very much. And so far, Jim Kirk had been nothing but friendly to Len, so Len would be friendly right back. It was the least he could do after he did, in fact, throw up on the guy on the shuttle over. He ate lunch with Kirk, he studied with Kirk, and in their downtime, he had a pretty decent time just hanging out with the man.

Through their frequent interactions, Len was already learning to read behind the front Kirk put up and see the person underneath. He had a good heart, a fierce loyalty to those he thought had earned it, and staggering intelligence. Outside of classes, he was often quiet and contemplative, pretty easy going, and downright irritating in his attempts to be helpful wherever he could. Len had nipped that in the bud as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Every time Jim came to his dorm after classes to study, Len would at some point take a break to use the restroom, get a drink, stretch his legs, something small that took no more than 3 minutes tops. Every time he returned to the living area, he would find that the kid had done something or other. Finished a page of notes for Len, cleared up the water glasses he tended to leave on the coffee table, folded the blanket he kept draped over the couch. It was like the kid couldn’t just sit. He had to be doing something, and apparently that something was finding menial chores to perform.

The last straw had been 2 months or so into term when he returned from a quick run to the store for some snacks and had found Jim cleaning his kitchen. The dishes had already been washed and dried, and were sitting in neat lines on the counter. The countertops had been wiped down, and Jim was tying off the trash bag as he entered. He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the kid struggle with the plastic ties, before Jim spoke:

“Sorry, I didn’t know exactly where your dishes all went, and I didn’t want to do it wrong, so I just---” he trailed off, eyes darting around the room as Len gazed about. “Um… Bones?”

Len cleared his throat, still adjusting to the strange nickname the other man had given him. “You didn’t need to do this, Jim. Thanks.”

Jim’s brows furrowed slightly, and Len wasn’t sure if it was disappointment or confusion that showed most prominently on his face. “It’s no problem. Just figured… might as well make myself useful, right?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, but really… you don’t need to do this,” he waved his hand around the apartment vaguely, “whatever this is.”

“Oh, I know,” Jim said, a little too quickly. “I just...you know, you let me hang out here, and I thought the least I could do would be to---”

“Kid,” Len cut him off. “You’re my friend, not some random houseguest. And it’s not even your mess. If you were picking up after yourself, that’d be one thing but…” Jim shifted uncomfortably, suddenly looking extremely lost. The kid had his own unique set of baggage, that much was clear, even from their limited time together. Jim had shown up on the shuttle fresh out of a bar fight and accepted a drink from a stranger for god’s sake, and that was just the start. The more time he spent with him, the more he was sure would reveal itself.

And that was fine by him. Hell, Lord knows he had his own demons what with the divorce, the drinking, Joanna… but that was another matter.

Len could see his walls going up, and, not in the mood for a confrontation with a cornered Jim Kirk, he said “… in case you hadn't noticed, this ain’t exactly a tea party, and we’re not exactly standing on ceremony. A dirty glass or two isn’t going to kill anyone, now would you sit down?”

Jim hesitated a moment before deflecting beautifully, throwing his hands up in a defeated gesture and saying, “If the ghost of Emily Post comes back to haunt me, I blame you.”

Len snorted and huffed back, “Duly noted.”

Jim didn’t try to clean anymore after that, though he sometimes looked desperately uncomfortable, and McCoy quickly found that the best way to defuse awkward situations with James Kirk was to turn them into a joke. He made a point of finishing off drinks loudly and setting them down with a thunk on the coffee table, meeting Jim’s eye with a raised brow, a challenge. Jim gave as good as he got, and his usual response was to smirk and settle himself more comfortably wherever he was sitting, often with a dramatic roll of the eyes or , “Yeah yeah, have your fun. Jokes on you, you’re going to have water rings all over that table.” Len would of course never admit he was right, not even when a water ring did in fact appear within no less than a month after Jim’s sporadic cleaning sprees ended.

Jim slowly became more at ease spending time in the dorm with Len just for the sake of spending time, and Len did his best to find little ways to let Jim know that his presence was not unwanted or inconvenient. Jim seemed to prefer a certain brand of protein bar, and often had them on hand, but Len bought some just in case, and kept them in the pantry. After Jim stayed pretty late several nights in a row as they crammed for a major exam coming up in one of their shared classes, he suggested that Jim leave some more comfortable clothes at Len’s place so he could change if he wanted to; sitting for hours in reds wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing, and the wrinkles were a bitch to get out. Jim even spent the night a few times when their study sessions or movie nights went too late and he didn’t want to walk all the way across campus to his own shared dorm, though Len suspected a lot of that came from not wanting to wake his roommate.

So he really wasn’t all that surprised when Jim showed up at his door and asked if he could crash there for the night. He stepped aside to let him in, and grabbed the extra pillow from his bed, and a blanket from the closet.

“You want the couch, or---?”

“Floor’s fine,” Jim replied with a shrug, toeing off his shoes. Len rolled his eyes and started making up the couch anyway. He wasn't going to make Jim sleep on the floor. Jim smiled gently at him. “Thanks, Bones. Sorry to barge in like this, but Gary locked the door and he won’t let me in, and--”

“Woah, woah, he locked the door? It’s… 9:30.” Len knew from Jim’s occasional grumbling that his roommate wasn’t exactly a peach, but that seemed extreme.

“Yeah, he’s weird about his schedule, if I’m not home by like… 8:45, he locks the door and I’m just kinda out of luck,” Jim said with a shrug. “It’s no big deal.”

“That’s… ridiculous. He’s a grown ass man, and he wants everyone to be in bed by 9? It’s your room too, Jim, he can’t just--” he trailed off as a thought struck him. “You’ve left here way past 9:30 before. Has he locked the door every time?”

“Uh… yeah?” Jim said, staring at Len like he was missing something extremely obvious.

“And where do you go when he locks you out?” Len was sure he wasn’t going to like the answer.

Jim shrugged. “Around. Sometimes I go to the library, and just kinda take over one of the study rooms. Sometimes I go out. One night I got a hotel, but that’s only because I had a combat review the next day and I needed the rest, so I--- what?” He broke off abruptly as he realized Len was staring.

“You coulda come here,” Len said. “You can always come here.” He arranged the blankets on the couch, placing the pillow against the armrest as Jim hovered awkwardly behind him a few feet away.

“Oh… well, uh… thanks, but it’s really not a big deal.”

“Well, you’re staying here tonight. And if it happens again, you come here, ok? I’ve got plenty of room, and it’s not like you haven’t stayed here before.” Jim nodded, eyes on the floor. ‘Hey,” Len waited until he looked up. “I mean it. He locks you out? You come here. It’s either that or we report him.”

“Nah, it’s like I said, it’s---

 “No big deal,” Len finished for him. “Alright then, if that’s how you want to be. Tomorrow, I’m buying you a toothbrush.”

“I have a toothbrush, Bones,” Jim replied with a roll of his eyes.

“”For here, you idiot. Now would you shut up and go to sleep? Some of us have work in the morning.”

“Sure thing, Bones,” Jim said, taking a seat on the couch as Len moved back towards his own room.

“Bones?” Jim called quietly after him.

“”Yeah, kid?”

“...thanks.”

“No problem.”

As he turned to shut off the lights, he saw Jim arrange himself carefully on the couch, knees curled to his chest, arms curled by his head. He watched Jim curl into a ball as best he could on the narrow surface, and he turned off the lights, and he went to bed.

Over the next several years, he saw Jim asleep numerous times. That first year Jim ended up staying over at his place more often than not, not wanting to cause what he called “unnecessary conflict” with his asshat of a roommate but also often unable to meet his involuntary curfew. Len didn’t mind a bit, and by the time summer term rolled around, the two had submitted for joint housing anyway. Enrolling in the Academy, bitter from the divorce and angry at the world, Len had sworn up and down that he did not want a roommate, but the more time he spent with Jim the closer they got, and it didn’t take long at all for the two to become best friends. They were practically inseparable (aside from track specific classes and Len’s work schedule). Jim was a pretty swell roommate, though they did have to have another talk about not having to keep the apartment spotless all the time; the kid was a neat freak like Len couldn’t believe.

The new housing meant that they each had their own rooms, but by that point there were few boundaries between the two, and more often than not Jim had no qualms about leaving his door open a crack as he slept, so Len caught occasional glimpses every now and again. Every time was the same: knees curled into his chest, arms curled by his head. Lots of people slept with their limbs bent, but on Jim it looked… defensive. He was coiled just a little too tightly to be completely comfortable, and there was a tenseness to his muscles that just didn’t scream “restful sleep”.

It was late that summer that Len found out about the abuse. Jim didn’t tell him much, but it was more than enough to confirm that his childhood had been awful, and served to confirm many of Len’s darker theories about some of his friend’s strange behaviors and quirks. For all his fronting, the kid’s self-esteem was in constant danger of taking a nosedive, but you’d never know it to look at him… or talk to him… he was really too good at his charade. If it weren’t for the trust between them, and Jim opening up more and more as their friendship progressed, Len would almost have thought that Jim believed his own lies.

The only outward evidence of his friend’s deeply buried fear and insecurity was in how he slept. Suddenly, and with heartbreaking clarity, Len realized that his friend slept the way he did because it was protective. Curled so tightly, he protected his weak points: head, abdomen, chest.

A few times, Len had gently tried to uncoil his friend, to arrange the limbs in a more comfortable and lax position, but one of two things always happened. Either Jim woke up, and boy was that an awkward thing to try to talk your way out of, or he didn’t, and Bones would watch in dismay as his muscles, trained by years of repetition to stay in exactly the position Jim placed them, either fought against his ministrations or, the few times he did successfully straighten out an arm or leg, immediately return to their previous position.

It came up eventually, and Len had reluctantly agreed to let it go. Jim was allergic to damn near any sedative that might relax his muscles enough to retrain them, and it didn’t seem to be bothering him any, really. Jim had dealt with many of his demons; he really was far more functional than he had any right to be given what Len knew of his childhood. His father had died, his mother abandoned him in blame to an abusive stepfather, his brother had bailed… there was very little stability and security in Jim Kirk’s life up until Starfleet, and if that didn’t just break Len’s heart.

Then, of course, he found out about Tarsus. Christ, what _hadn’t_ this kid lived through? Abuse wasn’t enough? There had to be famine? Torture? Genocide?

So if Jim’s coping mechanism was to sleep in a way that made him feel a bit safer, who as Len to stop him? All through Academy, Jim slept like that.

After the incident with Nero, and the destruction of Vulcan, after over 48 hours awake and running on pure adrenaline, body beat to hell and back and desperately exhausted, Len thought for a brief moment that his friend might just be too tired to uphold the routine.

He was proven wrong when he used his medical override code to enter the captain’s chambers, in which Jim had temporarily taken up residence, courtesy of his new post. Jim was curled on the bed, shuddering with fever and eyes squeezed tightly shut, even in sleep. Len gently woke him, and helped him sit up, slowly unfolding his hunched posture as Jim huffed out painful breaths around his broken ribs. He helped Jim stand and escorted him to MedBay, scolding him all the while for not seeking medical attention before holing up somewhere no one could access him and falling asleep. Jim was too tired to make much of a retort, and settled for mumbling again and again, “‘M sorry, Bones.”

After several long and grueling sessions with a regenerator, Len caved to Jim’s pleas of, “I just want to rest, Bones. Can I please go back to my room?” and escorted him carefully back to the captain’s quarters.

Thoroughly chastised and on the mend, Jim sat gingerly on the bed and slowly laid back. Len carefully administered a hypo to combat the fever, dimming the lights and turning to make his way back to MedBay.

“Thanks, Bones,” Jim called softly as he was about to leave.

“No problem, kid,” he replied. He didn’t have to look to know that Jim was curling up again. The rustle of the sheets told him plenty.

The pattern continued. Jim always slept curled in a ball. He never slept on his stomach, or on his back.

So when Khan betrayed them, and everything went to hell with the warp core, and they brought Jim to him, asleep on a gurney, his heart dropped into his stomach.

Because Jim was on his back… and he wasn’t breathing.

_Jim doesn’t sleep on his back._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] If You Need a Place To Crash (Let Me Catch You When You Fall)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12118452) by [stuckwithyou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuckwithyou/pseuds/stuckwithyou)




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